Mid August, everything on campus seems picture perfect. The Geese are healthy, the trees are thick with leaves, and the days are long. Spring term is a time of studying in the sun and sleeping under the stars. Come September this great equilibrium is disturbed, and the student population descends on the campus like Panama disease on a banana plantation. After a characteristically slow response time from nature, it inevitably plunges into the bitterness of winter. When humans are stressed, they lose their hair; trees lose their leaves for similar reasons. And then, like clockwork, the majority of students depart and once again nature strives to emulate the Garden of Eden. This is not merely a statistical blip: I have been tracking this since 1A and a definite pattern is emerging.
While we don’t have control over nature’s mood swings, we can at least learn from them. There is a lot we can glean from the natural world around us. Squirrels teach us that if we save in excess, only good will result. Geese teach us to fight for what’s important in life. Long winters teach us to appreciate the warm weather. When our natural surroundings migrate, hibernate, or die when there is a campus-wide influx of bipedal mammals on campus, I believe that here, too, there is a lesson to be learned.
We are living in the pipe-dream of the 60s. Social media, texting, high-speed Internet, and smartphones: we have attained instantaneous communication with anyone we please. Current estimates say Facebook will surpass 1 billion users in August. It is clear to everyone on our high-tech campus that we have faster access to more people than ever before.
However, we must pay attention to a natural law that puts an upper limit on the capacity of a system. Such a limit can be seen in the maximum population of a certain species in an ecosystem, in the overall amount of life on campus, and in the attention span of people. The more human interaction we cram into a day, the less substantial each becomes; the cost of breadth is depth. Perhaps we don’t notice because it is the new norm, but the amount of meaningful human interaction we encounter on a daily basis is less than it could be, and less than it once was.
Post-war North American trends are at least partially to blame. Bigger houses in sprawling suburbs (for those who grew up here), the rise of television, and of course the advent of internet-based communication all separate and divide us. The problem is compounded by the fact that human interaction, like a muscle, improves with use and diminishes with neglect. When we live our daily lives as students, crunch time may keep us holed up in an effective vow of silence for over a week. Then, with a weakened interaction complex, we might be less keen to be social and stay home because it is easier. And so the trend continues. Of course, this effect is overstated to illustrate a point, but over time this lack of interaction truly adds up.
Campus during the Fall and Winter terms face a similar conundrum. The campus is packed with people, and it is easy to get lost in the noise. Two factors are responsible for such a feeling. It is all too easy to let people walk by without striking up a conversation, since there will be ample opportunity with the next 100 people who walk by. Also, the friend-dilution effect discussed earlier is present: going to a bar, a group of friends quickly balloons and you end up going with a herd of acquaintances instead. And while many friends are good, a few friends are better. Why didn’t we choose U of T? We all heard the cautions: Too big, too many people, and too much of an impersonal feel. You feel like a cog in the machine. One can only imagine the dreary winters of that factory of a campus.
Waterloo is a great place, and even during the other terms the student population still gives off good vibes. But I implore you to take advantage of the unique situation we Spring Term students find ourselves in. The next time you see a small group of strangers going to class wondering aloud when QNC will open, don’t hesitate to interject and happily proclaim that the opening date is indeed September 21. Don’t complain about the lack of people on campus; it is a blessing, not a curse. Go out and have some meaningful interactions with people. Find out their philosophies on life and death. Argue about anything and everything, there is no better way to crystallize one’s beliefs. Work with them to develop each person’s picture of an ideal life. You may find that people are more interesting than they seemed back in the other terms.
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